Military
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BREAKING: Contract Awarded For Blue Angels Transition to Super Hornet
If you’re the sort of inquisitive or just plain nosy Avgeek who regularly checks the US Department of Defense website for contract information, you may have missed a barely-there notification listed on 13 August 2018. The contract to which I refer was right there, in between contracts awarded to Boeing for some CFM56-7B27AE engines and […] More
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Tornado: That Swing Wing Juggernaut From Across the Pond
The Panavia Tornado was jointly developed beginning during the late 1960s by Italy, the United Kingdom, and West Germany as the answer to a requirement for a Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MRCA). European NATO countries had been flying several American-designed jets for many years by that point. The RAF had looked at the General Dynamics F-111K […] More
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War Hoover: The Fabulously Flexible Lockheed S-3 Viking
Lockheed’s S-3 Viking carrier-based antisubmarine aircraft was developed to replace the venerable Grumman S-2 Tracker. To replace a versatile and frankly well-liked aircraft like the Tracker would take an excellent aircraft in its own right; one with not only next-level technology but also ground-breaking capabilities for carrier-based antisubmarine warfare (ASW). The thing was, even though Lockheed […] More
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The First of Many to Arrive in Saudi Were the Entire Shield at First
Operation Desert Shield began on 7 August 1990 when United States military personnel were sent to Saudi Arabia at the request of King Fahd. From the beginning there was a palpable feel that if Iraq moved on Saudi Arabia the US forces in Saudi would not be able to stop the Iraqis. Slow them down […] More
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Profiles in Aviation: Richard Ira Bong- World War II American Ace of Aces
In the history of aerial combat, the highest scoring American pilot, Richard Ira Bong, who scored a total of 40 victories, doesn’t even crack the top several hundred. Five Romanians, six Finns, ten Russians, five Japanese, 373 Germans, and a Croatian outscored him. Seven other pilots tied Bong with 40 victories, including the top Royal […] More
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Enola Gay: The Story of the Most Historic Boeing B-29
There once was a B-29 Superfortress bomber known to entire generations of Americans. That B-29, actually a B-29-45-MO, Army Air Forces serial number 44-86292, was built not by Boeing, but by the Glenn L. Martin Company at its plant in Bellevue, Nebraska. By no means unique but certainly rare, 44-86292 was one of the first […] More
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Watch: VAW-124 Bear Aces Just Ace Their 2017 OIR Deployment
Carrier Airborne Early Warning squadron ONE TWO FOUR (VAW-124) Bear Aces deployed with the rest of Carrier Air Wing EIGHT (CVW-8) aboard the Nimitz-class carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) between 21 January 2017 and 21 August 2017. The Bear Aces put together a cruise video from footage shot during their 2017 deployment. It’s a […] More
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The Skyray: This Manta-Winged Fighter Was The Last For Douglas
The date was 16 April 1956. The place was Naval Air Station (NAS) North Island in San Diego. Then and there, US Navy Composite Squadron THREE (VC-3) Blue Nemesis became the first Navy squadron to achieve operational status with a sensational new bat-winged jet fighter- the Douglas F4D-1 Skyray or Ford. The new jet would go […] More
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Watch: Perspective Turns Awesome Viper Demo Hop Into Epic Flight
As usual, the USAF F-16C Viper Demonstration Team put on one impressive aerial display after another this airshow season. They were at their very best during EAA AirVenture 2018 at Oshkosh this year. One particular video of an early-week demo flight has been breaking the internet. The clip was shot using a cockpit cam mounted […] More
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NASA 601: The Very Last of the Last Vikings
Built to replace Grumman’s venerable S-2 Tracker antisubmarine aircraft, the Lockheed S-3A Viking entered service on 20 February 1974 with Air Antisubmarine Squadron FOUR ONE (VS-41) Shamrocks. The first operational deployment of a Viking-equipped squadron took place when VS-21 Fighting Redtails went to sea with Carrier Air Wing ONE (CVW-1) aboard the modified Kitty Hawk-class […] More
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Watch: The Tragic Forrestal Fire Analyzed and Hard Lessons Learned
“Fire- fire on the flight deck.” July 29th 1967 dawned like many others aboard the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal (CVA-59) on Yankee Station in the northern Gulf of Tonkin. The carrier had begun her first Western Pacific (WestPac) deployment on June 6th after having deployed to the North Atlantic or the Mediterranean seven times- usually […] More
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Broken Arrow: Atomic Bombs Jettisoned Off Jersey Coast Still Missing
Broken Arrow. The very phrase sets off alarms everywhere. On July 28th 1957, a Douglas C-124A Globemaster II airlifter departed Dover Air Force Base (AFB) in Delaware bound for Europe via the Azores. The C-124A was carrying three Mark 5 atomic bombs and a single nuclear capsule. The Mark 5s were in Complete Assembly for Ferry […] More
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